Do you ever notice how few intellectuals visit gun mayhem on churches? Funny isn’t it? Even though their members score unusually high for atheism. Or how few scholars train assault rifles on strangers who have done them no bit of harm? Shooters — in their confused little dinosaur brains they may even believe themselves religious. As if you could pour a vial of ink on yourself to certify your rectitude. Red ink, Hey I’m holy! Gotta go kill someone!

What are these men attempting to prove to themselves? First, think up the very baddest act I could do. Then buy the gun and ammunition. I’m the baddest male in this whole damned world. So I’ll kill me after I’ve killed enough of not-me. Which proves — what?

Like this:

I propose that in the 21st century patriarchy has run out of effectiveness. Half of humanity is capable of pretty much what the other half is, but law and custom do not iallow it. Think of the progress we could be making. Physics, medicine, soap-box derbies.

Yet instead of making the rational choice to get more out of human potential, we’re making the ego choice to keep half of humanity at half potential. Of course WE means the patriarchs. Who would be better served to plunge ahead with full and fulsome total participation.

What holds them back? Hardly a male on this planet lacks a cellphone to interact with but they’re still irrational luddites. They’re undereducated, they’re afraid of new things. Might bite.

Whereas women are bubbling and buoyed by what we felt at the Women’s March. All those people and they were all us. We didn’t need men. We made ourselves a force. Bonding, serious, giddy. Pussy hats, not tiki torches. Bonding. Not needing man sweat, the scent of men, the deep voice of men.

Like this:

I say women, I mean women as traditionally socialized. I say wimmin, I mean valkyries who’ve had it with patriarchy and its affectations. Wimmin are hungry for power, women say “Oh gosh, not me.’ And I don’t need all women to be wimmin. Lord what a mess! I just need wimmin to win elections and elbow the dickheads out of the way.

Violent? Not as violent as they’ve been to us.

Resentful? Like we never noticed your stolid dependence on inequality. Us notice?

Wimmin have storm in their chests. Women storm elsewhere. Maybe in pie crusts or crocheted coverlets, not in your face. Wimmin will get in your face.

Now our challenge is to find an ‘off’ button for The Smile. Ladies, just turn it off! Maybe the hardest thing you ever try to do. Can you decondition yourself from The Smile? The model’s smile, the johnny-on-the-spot smile, the grit your teeth but disarm him smile? The wife smile, the podium smile, the everything’s-just-rosy smile. The secretary smile, the tiara winner’s smile, the store clerk’s smile. “May I help you?”

We hide such chaotic fantasies behind those smiles. That smile placates when we’re damned if we’ll placate. That smile quickly slides into second place, it won’t compete. They beguile when we’re goddam done beguiling. Our pushbutton smiles are wired into our systems like the twitch in a cat’s tail is wired into the cat.

Wired in like braces on teeth.

The Smile is a girl’s useful tool with many gadgets to deploy. The Smile is also useful to men, to keep us smiling into their eyes. Proof that we don’t trust ourselves yet.

Like this:

In the great Alabama Senate race of 2017 let it be known that nearly two-thirds of white women voted for alleged child molester Roy Moore. To our white womanly eternal shame. Emphasize eternal.

On the up side, the Black vote was 98% female, 94% male. What a wallop! May a white woman be elated here? Watch me rollick and romp and gloat. Haven’t felt this hopeful since Obama won. Imagine an America where you were American by birth, not by melanin allotment. Where White Supremacists would hold their cabals in secret because the rest of us stood up to them. No matter how many guns they had. And the police would be on the side of the greater good.

This Black vote, Black voice, is I believe unprecedented. Finally the conscience of Black America turned the vote. If they run with this, American politics will change —like stepping on a land mine.One minute it’s just another day, next minute those who would keep any polity down would flicker down in political shreds.

I’m well aware of the Black raised eyebrow at me. Even though I’ve voted in your interest time and again. And have never used the ‘N’ word, or anything disrespectful. Still you blame me for institutional racism. It’s not enough we’ve got our own things we’re fighting for? We’re to blame you’re not going to the polls? GO TO THE POLLS.